


Night Flames

by The Sign of Tea (NoPlastic)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Emotional Infidelity, F/M, Light Dom/sub, Pining, Unresolved Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-05 16:21:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4186638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoPlastic/pseuds/The%20Sign%20of%20Tea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a cruel twist of fate that it was her of all people, the only person he knew he really couldn’t have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night Flames

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt by redbuttonhole.

Fire painted the walls of the abandoned building with its blood-red light and night-black shadows. Cold wind came in through the window – the glass had been broken long ago – carrying a faint smell of smoke.  
Memories came back. The farmer’s barn Mycroft had set on fire when he was ten, the excuses made up to protect him. The first experiment blowing up, a fire in the kitchen, everyone suspecting Sherlock had done it on purpose. Guy Fawkes Night, Mary and Sherlock on a motorcycle, a text saying _two minutes left_. Tonight, the old factory hall, Mary running fast, both of them coughing from the thick smoke, stumbling outside just in time before the ceiling collapsed. Her hand on his face. _Are you okay? – Are you?_  
Even now, he could almost feel the heat of the flames as he watched them destroy the factory building, only a few streets away. Or perhaps it was his skin that was still burning where she’d touched him.

The only pieces of furniture in the otherwise bare room were a chair and a table. Sherlock had used this place as an escape before, an island of silence that he needed sometimes for brainwork. How Mary knew about it was a mystery. That was why he loved her, she was full of secrets. The thought that she’d been here before as well, without telling him about it, leaving no traces – it excited him in a way he wasn’t supposed to be thinking about. It was like a part of those dreams about her that he wasn’t supposed to have. Dreams that made him wake up in the middle of the night, the ghost of her still naked in front of him as he hid his face in the sheets so he didn’t have to hear himself crying out her name. Dreams in which he was allowed to be close to her, and did to her whatever she told him to do.  
He swallowed hard and shook his head, trying to get rid of the thought.

“Sit still,” Mary said, pretending she didn’t see him squirming at her commanding tone. “You only just got out of a burning building. Your hair’s been singed, and you’re shaking. Drink this.”

She put a bottle of water on the table in front of him.

“Where did you get that from?” he wondered, cursing his mind for being slow and foggy because of her mere presence to the point that he could barely think straight.

“I stored a few bottles in that shabby old cabinet in the other room,” she explained and pointed towards what had once been the kitchen.

Sherlock turned around, but it was too dark to see anything.

_“You_ _didn’t notice.”_ Her voice turned into a sing-song whisper, teasing him unintentionally… Or was it intentional?  
He grabbed the bottle and drank a few sips from it, hoping the cold water would distract him a little. It didn’t help much.

She joined him in gazing out of the window, not saying a word, her hand resting behind him on the back of the chair. He could hear her breathing. It sounded slightly sped up. Through the fabric of their clothes, he felt the warmth of her skin as she stood right next to him.

He couldn’t go on like this, he thought for the thousandth time, so close to her, but never allowed to touch. It was a cruel twist of fate that it was her of all people, the only person he knew he really couldn’t have.

“Remember,” she said in a flat tone, staring into the flames like she was hypnotized. “The first time you walked into a fire for me.”

“Yes,” he replied. “Because of John.”

Saying the name of her husband, his best friend, almost brought him back to reason, reminding him of how wrong he was, making him regret. However, between the waves of heat and heartache inside him, any other feeling drowned quickly.

“Because of John,” she echoed as if she didn’t have words of her own.

“Let’s go home,” he suggested, a final lifeline to stop him from doing something irrevocable (like saying what he felt out loud, or begging, or falling on his knees before her).

“Yes,” she said, and lifted her hand to stroke his cheek once more, a touch soft as a feather. “Enough for today.”

He closed his eyes. In a second he would get up from the chair, and they would leave the building. She would drive home, and he would get a taxi to Baker Street where he could be alone with his thoughts.  
In his dreams, however, they would stay here. The touch of her hand would be firm and real. Her fingers would wander from his cheek down to his throat, and her nails would dig into his skin, drawing helpless whimpers from his lips. Whatever had been on his mind before would stop making sense – old pictures, recent conclusions, times and places, numbers and formulae. She would grab his chin and force him to look up at her, and then she would bend down to kiss him. Her mouth would feel like fire and make him forget everything.


End file.
